Call to Courage

As I am writing this, I am waiting to hear if a new major project, and a new phase of my life, is about to begin. The universe shuffled her cards and landed the Wheel of Fortune squarely in my lap on the night of the eclipse. Since then, events have unfolded as if pre-ordained, as if divine will chose me as a vessel for energy that wishes to be birthed; and I am finally in a place to stand grounded and firm, strong and sturdy enough to birth the energy that wishes to be born.

The waves of excitement have been chased by waves of fear. I have spent a cold, Southern Winter in hibernation in Tasmania – wondering why I was delivered back to this windy and temperamental island, when I thought I was finished with her many and varied moods.

The Hero’s Journey

In the depths of my dark night in Dorrigo, I was told so many times that I was walking the Hero’s Journey. I did not want to hear it. I did not care for that journey, for that responsibility, or that narrative. I came to Dorrigo searching for peace and expansiveness; and I found only stifling claustrophobia in small, unsuitable spaces – with an unyielding, impenetrable force-field around the things I had come to seek.

But in the midst of the turmoil, I helped to birth a business; a Healing Space. There she stood on the Main Street,

Holding her own.

Holding the light.

Holding her space.

I didn’t understand the significance of this birth at the time, but she seeded a template within me, one I could carry with me wherever I went.

And as for the Hero… well, she must always return home. It is part of the journey, part of the archetype… Part of the responsibility.

And so I reluctantly returned, only to discover a different spirit sitting inside of the same human clothes. This spirit somehow manifested a haven in which to rest for a few months. She swapped her mouldy, dark and cloying abode; for a huge, light filled home - with the expansiveness that she had so long been seeking.

She found everything that she was looking for, just not in the place in which she had been looking for it.

Shedding Skins

Since I have returned to Tasmania, and finally my own home; the cold Earth has held me as I dove within. I hibernated beside the fire, and I shed the layers of the last 18 months. After each skin slipped and fell, I would attempt to write, or speak, or remember that which had led me here – sitting in familiar surroundings, feeling unfamiliar.

Each time I shrank away – exposed – and not yet ready. In the midst of transformation, I was raw and flinching against the painful, frigid air. As the dead skin collected at my feet; slowly, I began growing a new one… A stronger, more supple protection. One that glistened in the sun, as she dared to peek her face with increasing surety, from out behind the clouds. As she warmed the Earth and the air, she reminded me that all seasons change. That nothing is forever.

We are Birth and we are Death

As we allow the old to slough away, we plant ourselves deep in the dark of the aftermath, and we wait until the light comes again, offering us the chance of rebirth. We grow upwards from the rich compost of the detritus of a former self. As a Scorpio and a Banshee, nothing resonates with me more than the ability to transform and renew from death and decay.

Sometimes it feels endless, like we are bound to live out so many lives – trying to hold it all together within one body, one mind, and one lifetime. We are shape-shifters and masters of regeneration. The seasons live within us, and we are called to honour the depths of despair as our fertile ground for the new shoots of Spring – even when it feels as if they may never come.

I left the Dorrigo circle without carrying out my Call to Courage; and yet I feel as though my life has been one long clarion call to courage. That which I could not respond to inside of the circle, has been answered over and over outside of it. She called to me across the vastness of the plateau; she whispered to me every day as I walked the unknown paths of her wild places; and she finally called me home to a place I did not recognise as home anymore. And here she calls to me again - for something much bigger than me – but something for which I now hold the sacred template, and am courageous enough to fulfill. As she continues to call, I will continue to answer. For that is the contract I know I have signed, and even though it does not exist in my memory, I know it exists in my soul. As whale wisdom spoke wordlessly to me only a few weeks ago – “the deeper that we are able to dive, the higher we are able to leap”.

May you all leap courageously high.

by Christina Urso-Cale

Banshee, Animal Communicator, & Reader of Cards